GE Announces New LED Lighting Vertical Farm Project to Settle in UK
A few days ago, GE announced a new LED lighting vertical farm project in the UK, which will provide linear Arize horticultural lighting for the farm by its company.
The project will include an area of 5,120 square meters and is expected to produce 420 metric tons (about 926,000 pounds) of green leafy vegetables per year. The farm, built by Jones Foods Ltd. (JFC), is located in North Lincolnshire, England and will be commercialized this fall. Vertical farm-grown shelves can be extended to 11 or 3 stories. Current will install a 12.3 km linear Arize LED strip, equivalent to 38 end-to-end Eiffel Towers.
Due to the size of the project, Jones chose to work with Current. James Lloyd-Jones, CEO, and co-founder of JFC said: "No one has been able to industrialize this indoor and high-care food production method to prove that it is truly commercially viable." "We know that lighting will become The lifeblood of facility agriculture, we need a potential partner and work with us to develop the right lighting and spectrum to achieve this vision."
The new farm will produce green leafy vegetables throughout the year, and LED light can minimize the growth cycle. Currently does not disclose the details of the spectrum, but it is said that the red portion is enhanced.
Through three-layer cultivation racks and environmental control techniques, every factor of crop growth, such as the concentration of nutrient solution delivered directly to the roots of plants, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the room, the wavelength range and duration of the fill light, etc. Will be strictly controlled.
Since the growth of the supporting crops is a prepared nutrient solution, and the plant cultivation equipment is also located in a so-called "high care environment", this means a clean room-like environment. This ensures safe food production and enables Jones to offer varieties to cosmetics and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
It is worth mentioning that the whole operation process is the responsibility of the robot, which means that these plants will not be polluted by human contact, and the farm can realize the whole process from planting to harvesting without labor, and Jones said in the traditional green leaves. During the growth process, there may be 13 forms of interaction between humans and plants.
As in the case of vertical agriculture, production takes place close to consumers, minimizing transportation costs and environmental impact. According to JFC, the project will reduce water use by 90% compared to traditional farms.
Recently, news of building LED plant factories and applying LED lighting to farms and greenhouses has been reported around the world. For example, Signify recently announced that Agro-Inwest, the Russian fresh vegetable growing company, the world's largest LED horticultural lighting project, will expand Philips LED plant lighting. The application of the system has been expanded from the current 25 hectares to 68.5 hectares, equivalent to the greenhouse area of 100 football fields. The just-concluded 2018 Green Tech, the world's top horticultural fair held in the Netherlands, also focused on modern agriculture, with a significant increase in agricultural lighting exhibitors. 100% LED has become the way forward in the field of new greenhouse lighting.